Compare and contrast the characters of Hedda Gabler and Miss Julie in the plays by Ibsen and Strindberg. Support your findings with comments on the writers attitudes to their characters. August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen were both great playwrights of the 19th century, and both played a large role in the evolution of modern day naturalism / realism. The plays I will be discussing are Ibsens Hedda Gabler, (1890) and Strindbergs Miss Julie (1888). In Karens lecture on Strindberg, she told how the...

English Final Paper William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen are two great authors of their time and are still read by many today. William Shakespeare wrote many plays; one that is more well known is Hamlet. Henrik Ibsen is a not so well known author but wrote a great rival play named A Doll's House. These two plays were extraordinary for their time and there has been much controversy and debates on which play made the greatest impact to culture and society. These two plays, written in very differen...

The established view of Hedda Gabler sees the play as a study of the frustration and despair engendered in the exceptional individual by a conventionalised society. In this paper I present a psychoanalytic re-interpretation of the play which in certain respects inverts this received reading. Insofar as it does so, however, my interpretation is intended not to cancel the received view but to play against it. The first section of the paper is predominantly Freudian in approach. The second section ...

The mid-nineteenth century realist playwright Alexandre Dumas wrote the following about his drama. "If... I can exercise some influence over society; if, instead of treating effects I can treat causes; if, for example, while I satirize and describe and dramatize adultery, I can find means to force people to discuss the problem, and the law-maker to revise the law, I shall have done more than my part as a poet, I shall have done my duty as a man... We need invent nothing; we have only to observe,...

Henrik Ibsen was born in the Stockman Building in Skin, Norway. He spent part of his childhood on Vent&o slash; p Farm after his father went bankrupt. In 1843, he was apprenticed to a chemist in Grim stad. That was when he began writing satire and elegant poems in the style of the time. He wrote his first play in 1849, a five-act tragedy in verse, Catiline, which was published in 1850 under the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarne. The Warrior's Barrow was written and performed in 1850, as the first of Ibs...

In A Doll's House, Ibsen presents a view of the world that is unconventional to say the least. He breaks from tradition to compose a play that deals with what were at the time controversial social issues, and he presents a view of these issues that was highly unpopular. In A Doll's House as well as in many of his other plays from his modern period, Ibsen was criticized because he dared to break new ground and to challenge the accepted values of his society. So, was Ibsen's play a feminist work, ...

Hedda Gabler is not an easy character to get to know. At first reading she seems a bitter personality portrayed in an old-fashioned script set in an out-outmoded and foreign society. How could a woman in 102-year-old play possibly be understandable or relevant to the late-twentieth-century student However, upon further examination, Hedda Gabler's fictional reality not only offers us the opportunity to observe the art and social concerns of Ibsen's day, but extends to us a paradigm by which we ma...

The Effects Society Has On the Characters in "Ghosts" Henrik Ibsen drew ideas for his plays from events in his life. Ibsen was born in Skin, Norway. During this time there was some tension between the Danish and the Norwegians. This animosity between the two cultures played a large part in Ibsen's life and his early work (Bloom 10). In Ibsen's early childhood his parents were social and prosperous people. But when he was seven years of age his father was forced to mortgage their house and they w...

When 19th century playwright Henrik Ibsen learned of the way women were being portrayed by his fellow playwright August Strindberg in his play "Miss Julie" in 1888, he became outraged. The play portrayed the main character, Julie, as a secondary form of humanity that is inferior to men -- just as Strindberg viewed women himself. He believed it was a fact of science that women could never be equal to men no matter how hard they try to. Ibsen and Strindberg had been previously competing over socia...

Ibsen's Drama, A Doll House, upset many preexisting ideas about the roles of men and women in an European household, although it was written in only eighteen-seventy-nine, its main ideas and themes are closely associated with women's suffrage movements nearly thirty years later. Because this is a play and not a novel, Ibsen's use of lighting and stage direction play a significant role conveying Ibsen's poetic themes and ideas. Also, like most modern plays, Ibsen's minor characters serve major ro...

Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts is concerned with challenging the conventional norms of society, many of which he views as "no longer beneficial". Through his characters, Ibsen explores the conflict that arises because of the outdated ideas that people cling to, as is the case with Pastor Manders who is subsequently self-righteous and hypocritical. Ibsen also shows the devastating consequences that the past or "ghosts" can have on people's lives. Osvald for instance, is haunted by his father's "sins"...

When the play A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen was first performed, society was much different, and the play shocked many people. Today we don't have quite the same problem, but a deeper look at the "meaning' of the play reveals that it is about problems themselves, not a specific issue. Perhaps a play about gay parenting, internet privacy, or AIDS in the workplace can strike chords of concern in our contemporary audience, and Ibsen's works (perhaps) should be viewed in light of their impact upon ...